


Final Disposition

by Kieron_ODuibhir



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Corpses, Death, Gen, Grief, SO, That's it, about what happened to it, after the death scene, also gongaga is literally the only place on the Planet, and no one else is present, and people praying at them, angeal is dead for this whole fic, i just feel like in a game where highly jenova'd cells are practically an evil science currency, in three different speculative timelines, so it's cultural, this is just zack and the corpse, what became of the body isn't an idle question, where we see graves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-03
Updated: 2021-02-03
Packaged: 2021-03-14 11:34:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29170416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kieron_ODuibhir/pseuds/Kieron_ODuibhir
Summary: Disposal of human corpses, also calledfinal disposition, is the practice and process of dealing with the remains of a deceased human being.Three different ways Zack could have dealt with what was left of Angeal.
Relationships: Zack Fair & Angeal Hewley
Comments: 18
Kudos: 35





	1. 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [uselesseunoia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/uselesseunoia/gifts).



> Option One

1)

Zack knelt there by the body for hours.

He didn’t know why. Maybe because every wound he had cut into the great twisted body of Penance had vanished when Angeal fell back into his own shape, so there was no obvious _reason_ for Angeal to be dead, and he was hoping it would turn out to be a misunderstanding.

That he’d breathe in again, and open his eyes, and Zack could give him a hand up and drag him in close and say _don’t you ever do that to me again_.

Maybe because he was afraid to turn his back on the body in case it _did something_ , in case it lunged up and attacked some more, but probably not that. Even if he _was_ living in a horror movie these days, even after everything he’d gone through over the man, even after that twisted hell of a battle, he couldn’t really look at Angeal and see the monster in this story.

And even if he could have, he refused to. Even if it would have made things easier. That was what Angeal and Genesis had thought, wasn't it? That it would be simpler to say _monster_ and give up.

The moon was up, only a sliver, when Angeal’s still and faded face glowed up green.

For an instant it seemed to fill out again, like he was back to how he’d been before all of it had happened, before his desertion even, when everything was okay. And then the whole shape of him sighed away into mako green, and there was nothing.

Zack cried again, over the nothing, louder and wetter than he had over the body. And when he was all cried out he swept his mussed hair out of his face, and stood up. Stabbed his standard-issue broadsword into the stone where Angeal had been as hard as he could, which meant it vanished almost to the hilt, and put the Buster Sword on his back.

He settled under the weight, and for the first time understood how it could have comforted Angeal to have it there, weighing on him, constantly threatening to tip him over backwards if he forgot about it. The heaviness of obligation, when you felt like otherwise you might just float away for hollowness.

Zack had seen bodies vanish into motes of mako before, though most of them didn’t. Most people needed graves to hold their bones. Most animals left meat.

 _SOLDIERs and monsters_ , he thought.

And then he headed back down the rickety, unstable path toward the exit, to see if anyone was out there waiting for him.


	2. 2

2)

Angeal was definitely dead. Zack _knew_ he was dead. There was, at this point, no way he was not dead.   


Even though there was no clear sign of any _reason_ for him to be dead, besides the color having bleached out of him the way it had been slowly leaching from Genesis all this time.

…all this time, Angeal _hadn’t_ been fading. He hadn’t even been _sick_. There’d been no _reason_ he had to die except he was _afraid_ of turning out like Genesis.

Zack knew Angeal was dead. He wasn’t going to try to wake him up or anything stupid like that. But he'd waited a long time, just in case. It had been hours, the moon had risen and worked its way up the sky and he hadn't woken. The body was looking grey and small and empty, and not even fading away like monsters often did. Zack knelt there a while longer, feeling scraped empty after running out of tears.  


Then he thought to himself, they’ll want me to bring the body back.

And he thought, _fuck no_.

Thought of the way _Hollander_ , who claimed to be Angeal’s real _dad_ , had talked about him. Like a thing. Like a body already even when he was still alive. No. No. They couldn’t have him. That was something Angeal had decided, wasn’t it? In all his awful undeciding, the only two things Zack was sure he’d been sure of were that he wasn’t going back to Shinra. 

And then, that he wasn’t going to live.

Well, the things he guessed he knew Angeal was _most_ sure of were that he wanted to protect the world from suffering and he wanted Zack to…something. Make him proud? Remember him? But those weren’t _decisions_. Just wishes.

So. He wasn’t going to take him back to Shinra for the scientists to take apart.

Zack _knew_ Angeal was dead. But having laid the weight of the Buster Sword on his own back he bent down, anyway, before he left him alone in that cold place, to curl Angeal’s stiff and chilly fingers around the hilt of the sword that had killed him.

Just in case he woke up, and needed to be able to defend himself.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> or thirdly

3)

He wasn’t taking Angeal back to Shinra to be cut apart and used to make more monsters. Angeal copies, even. He knew that was what they would do.

 _You’re perfect_ , Hollander had told Angeal, and Angeal had looked like he was going to vomit.

But he couldn’t just leave him lying here, to be stolen by Turks or criminals or eaten by monsters. What if the scavengers grew little Angeal faces on their chests or something? That would be awful.

Zack stood up from beside the body, his knees twinging only a little and unimportantly, and looked around. There was no earth here, nowhere to dig. He could probably hack a hole into the stone but he’d destroy both swords before he managed it, and Angeal had definitely expected him to keep the Buster with him longer than that.

And anyway, you couldn’t fill that kind of hole in again, not properly. It wouldn't keep the monsters out.

He swung Angeal’s sword onto his back, because it _had_ to go there, and then bit his lip, thinking. Angeal was bigger than him, still, even if he looked oddly small and wasted in death. But Zack was a SOLDIER. He bent down and gathered Angeal’s body into his arms. Angeal’s head dropped back horribly, and Zack hurriedly juggled his mentor’s weight so his head instead lay propped up against his shoulder, with almost all of his legs trailing off on the opposite side.

It was easier to balance all that weight against his chest than it should have been, because of the weight of the Buster sword. With Angeal in front and the sword at his back, he wasn’t trying to tip in either direction.

He just had to have enough strength to hold them both up. And he did.

Somehow his broadsword had gotten balanced on top of Angeal in the course of the juggling, lying diagonal across his lap and up his front like a sleeping child’s stuffed toy, and it was only once Zack was halfway through making his careful way down the pipes back toward the first floor, with Angeal still getting noticeably colder in his arms as he went, that he realized he could have just left it behind.

Not worth stopping to do it now, although if he'd still been over a long drop he might have tipped the sword down it in a fit of spite. It wasn't the sword's fault, though, what Zack had done with it.

Somewhere in the bowels of the bathhouse he finally found a cellar with a dirt floor. He broke earth at first with that sword he hadn’t left behind, then dug with a broken piece of wood from the collapsing building, and after that board broke, with another.

He dug himself in up to his waist, Angeal waiting patiently against the base of one wall, and decided that had to be enough. They were inside. Nothing lived here. The grave didn’t need to be as deep as the ones at home, in the Gongaga graveyard, where they had to make sure nothing sniffed its way in from the jungle to dig the dead up. He climbed out again.

Genesis had fallen. Probably about this deep, if not deeper, on the far end of that tunnel, he was lying broken at the bottom of a hole. Zack could go look for the body.

But then he’d have to drag it back here and dig another hole and…even if his physical strength would hold up for that, his heart wouldn’t.

And he didn’t _want_ to. He couldn’t really hate Genesis, but he didn’t deserve to be given the same goodbye Zack had for Angeal. And didn’t deserve to be buried next to him, either. Not after everything he’d done.

Zack heaved Angeal into the hole, then laid the broadsword on his chest. He could have kept it back to use as a marker, but this grave wasn't for visiting. It was meant to be hidden.

After a second, he bent and folded Angeal’s hands together over the sword, like he was praying, or holding the hilt, or both. Angeal had thanked him for what this sword had done. He was happy with it. He would surely want to keep it more than Zack would.

And it was standard-issue, so it looked just like the ones Angeal used to use most of the time, before he left Shinra and its weapons behind.

“Sleep well,” Zack told him, his voice almost not catching, before he started shoveling dirt over him, filling in the hole. His piece of wood broke and he used his hands instead. The already-dug loose earth didn't really need any kind of tool to move. He wasn't looking when Angeal's face disappeared into the ground.

When it was all piled on, and the grave was nothing but a slightly raised plot of disturbed earth, he almost fell down and stayed there a long time. But if he did that, he didn’t know how long it would take him to get up, here down in the dark where the sky couldn’t remind him to get up again.

So he drew a ragged breath, and turned, and ran.

He ran until he reached the door he’d come in by, all dark beyond now, and then he stood there just inside with both hands braced against the wall, drawing in breaths no less ragged than that last one beside the grave, that he could tell himself were from the running, from wearing out all his stamina and needing to get it back.

When his breath came easily again, he rubbed his face, smoothed his hair, straightened against the weight of the sword, and stepped through the open doorway.

Cloud and Tseng were waiting for him, outside. It was time to go back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy birthday again to R and thanks for the help!


End file.
